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Is Betelgeuse about to blow? (going supernova in weeks or just another breathless rumor?)
DiscoverMagazine ^ | 6/01/10 | Phil Plait

Posted on 06/01/2010 6:09:32 PM PDT by LibWhacker

I was going to wait to write about this, but I’m getting a lot of emails about it, so I’ll say something now, and followup when I get more information.

The story:

BABloggee Alereon (and many others) sent me to an interesting site: Life After the Oil Crash Forum — a forum that apparently has a lot of doomsday-type scuttlebutt posted to it.

An anonymous poster there says he has heard that the star Betelgeuse is about to go supernova, maybe as soon as a few weeks:

I was talking to my son last week (he works on Mauna Kea), and he mentioned some new observations (that will no doubt get published eventually) of “Beetlejuice”; it’s no longer round. This is a huge star, and when it goes, it will be at least as bright as that 1054 supernova…except that this one is 520 light years away, not 6,300 [...]

When it collapses, it will be at least as bright as the full moon, and maybe as bright as the sun. For six weeks. So the really lucky folks (for whom Betelgeuse is only visible at night) will get 24 hour days, everybody else will get at least some time with two suns in the sky. The extra hour of light from daylight savings time won’t burn the crops, but this might. Probably, all we’ll get is visible light (not gamma rays or X-rays), so it shouldn’t be an ELE. It’s sure gonna freak everyone out, though…..

Then it will form a black hole, but we’re too far away for that to matter.

The buzz is that this is weeks/months away, not the “any time in the next thousand years” that’s in all the books.

The basic takeaway:

OK, folks, first: when news like this comes from an unnamed source on some random forum, and that source is not even a primary one, and that secondary source quoted is also unnamed, and that person heard it from a third party that is also unnamed… well, oddly enough my skeptic alarm bell in my head rings loudly enough that my eardrums explode outward in every direction at the speed of light.

I hope I’m being clear here.

The first important thing to note here is that if Betelgeuse explodes, we’re in no danger at all. It’s too far away to hurt us. Got that? It’s the most important thing to remember here, because I’m quite sure this story will get wildly exaggerated as it gets repeated.

So, what’s the deal with Betelgeuse? What is it, will it explode, and if so, when?

The details:

Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the sky. That’s because it’s an intrinsically luminous star, and one that’s relatively close by. By luminous, I mean something like 100,000 times that of the Sun, and by close I mean roughly 600 light years away if not more. That’s 6 quadrillion kilometers, or almost 4 quadrillion miles. In other words, quite a hike.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant. It has a mass of something like 20 times the Sun’s, and is near the end of its life. When it dies, it will explode as a supernova, a titanic event that is among the most violent in the Universe. For details on how this happens, read this essay I wrote about it.

It’s hard to know just when a star will explode when you’re on the outside. Betelgeuse might go up tonight, or it might not be for 100,000 years. We’re just not sure.

Betelgeuse isn’t round, and it’s shrinking!

In the bulletin board post, he talks about the star not being round. It’s unclear, but it sounds like he’s referring to observations which show that there is a big plume coming from the surface of Betelgeuse. That was exciting news when it was released, but not hugely surprising; stars are active, and massive stars even more so. Also, note that those "new" observations are a year old!

That image above is from even earlier, and shows a Hubble observation of Betelgeuse taken in 2005. Note here that the star doesn’t look round, but that’s an illusion. The image shows a hot spot in Betelgeuse’s swollen atmosphere, and that makes it look like a bump is hanging of the side. In reality, that’s just because of the way the image is printed, and isn’t an actual physical bump. But the hot spot (probably due to a big ol’ bubble of hot gas rising near the surface) in itself shows that things on the star change all the time; just recently two such spots were found.

The post also talks about Betelgeuse shrinking. That claim is from observations made over the course of many years. Those data indicate the star is shrinking, but it’s unclear what they mean. While it may mean the star is in fact shrinking, starspots (sunspots on another star) may be fooling us, for example. Also, red supergiants aren’t like marbles, with a clean, sharp surface. They are balls of gas, extended and bloated, so there is no real surface. It’s therefore entirely possible the astronomers aren’t even really measuring the surface of the star at all, and it’s just the highly extended atmosphere that’s changing.

Surface tension, rotten to the core

The point I’m making is that a lot of stuff can happen on the surface of the star that has nothing to do with the core. Since it’s the core that generates the star’s energy and eventually causes it to explode, what’s happening on the surface is not an indication of any impending explosion.

Mind you, the surface and the core do "talk" to each other, though slowly. As the core changes, that information does leak to the surface, but it takes centuries. Until, that is, the core collapses. When that happens, the shock wave takes hours or days to get to the surface, and the star explodes. But that’s hardly a slow event taking decades! So any changes we see happening now probably have little to do with what’s happening hundreds of millions of kilometers deep in the star.

Also, it’s been known for a long time that Betelgeuse is a variable star; it’s light output changes. This shrinking may just be a part of that natural cycle, and again no indication of an explosion.

Having said all that, I’ll note that someday, Betelgeuse will explode. That’s for certain! But it’s also way too far away to hurt us. A supernova has to be no farther than about 25 light years away to be able to fry us with light or anything else, and Betelgeuse is 25 times that distance (which means it’s power to hurt us is weakened by over 600x). It’s the wrong kind of star to explode as a gamma-ray burst, so I’m not worried about that either.

At that distance, it’ll get bright, about as bright as the full Moon. That’s pretty bright! It’ll hurt your eyes to look at it, but that’s about it. The original post says it may get as bright as the Sun, but that’s totally wrong. It won’t even get 1/100,000th that bright. Still bright, but it’s not going to cook us. Even if it were going to explode soon. Which it almost certainly isn’t.

Conclusion:

So my personal opinion is that this is just another breathless rumor of astronomical doomsday that we get every couple of years. Even if any of the science of it is right, it doesn’t mean Betelgeuse is about to explode any day now. And since this is a rumor three times removed, I don’t put any stock in it. I’ll wait until I hear from named scientists with published or publishable data before I start to wonder if the star is about to blow.

And if and when it does explode, it can’t hurt us. Someday it will — maybe not for a hundred thousand years, but someday — and every astronomer on the planet hopes it happens in their lifetime! It will be a scientific bonanza unlike any ever seen.


TOPICS: Astronomy; Science
KEYWORDS: astronomy; betelgeuse; catastrophism; gammaraybursts; science; stringtheory; supernova; xplanets
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To: FARS
;') [singing] two thousand uno du'os party over says the lights of heaven /
tonight i'm gonna party like it's two thousand eleven
December 20, 2012

61 posted on 06/01/2010 7:56:50 PM PDT by SunkenCiv ("Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others." -- Otto von Bismarck)
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To: ETL

>>> Do you have a link to that excerpt you posted? Looks like it might be from Wiki.

Correct, copied and posted by me on a similar Betelgeuse thread last July.


62 posted on 06/01/2010 7:59:09 PM PDT by tlb
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To: Hoodat
Where's Obama's Ego...?

Too large, right?

Cheers!

63 posted on 06/01/2010 8:01:45 PM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: eCSMaster
Doesn't the Bible tell us that there will be signs in the heavens that people will be fearful ?
Also ? does the Bible tell us of 1 or 2 star like things that hits the earth ? Wormwood.
Don't get me wrong, Belegeuse won't hit the earth in anyway, but, was there 1 or 2 ?

The GOD of Israel is showing his mighty wonders !
64 posted on 06/01/2010 8:01:48 PM PDT by American Constitutionalist (There is no civility in the way the Communist/Marxist want to destroy the USA)
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To: eCSMaster
yup...

65 posted on 06/01/2010 8:04:05 PM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: Hoodat

wow!


66 posted on 06/01/2010 8:14:49 PM PDT by jpsb
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To: Natural Born 54

Orion is a winter constellation for us.


67 posted on 06/01/2010 8:15:05 PM PDT by Clay Moore (The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of a fool to the left. Ecclesiastes 10:2)
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To: LTCJ
2012, eh. This coming 2012?

Well. Goodbye! And thanks for all the fish!"

Yes, the old Gary Larson far side fishing cartoon.
68 posted on 06/01/2010 8:17:41 PM PDT by American Constitutionalist (There is no civility in the way the Communist/Marxist want to destroy the USA)
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To: LibWhacker

Soon, many of us will start receiving that Mars e-mail again which claims that, in August, Mars will be making a close approach to Earth and appear as large as the full moon. Truth is, Mars and Earth do not have a close approach every August, but rather every approximate 26-27 months, for that is how long it takes Earth to catch up to Mars along our inner track (think of the solar system as a circular race track with Earth being in ‘lane 3’ and Mars ‘lane 4’ — one Mars year is about 20 months). In any case, no matter close the ‘close approach’, Mars will only look like a very bright orange or gold star. The last such close approach occurred this past January 2010. And so the next won’t be until March or April, 2012.


69 posted on 06/01/2010 8:23:30 PM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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To: vigilo
Daylight savings gives us more sunshine? Wow, the power of congress is amazing.

To think of all the useless worrying about global warming, when all Congress needs to do is to abolish daylight saving time and the reduced amount of sunshine would probably take care of the problem.

70 posted on 06/01/2010 8:28:42 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: FARS

The universe cannot end because we are controlled by a supreme diety with big ears who is a smoker.

The way the USA is going and the hopeless morons who support Hussein by being TV viewers leads me to not care at this point. People trade their liberty for NCAA ball games. Morons.

Bring it on BeetleJuice. Get it over with.


71 posted on 06/01/2010 8:32:27 PM PDT by Frantzie (Democrats = Party of I*lam)
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To: Chode



72 posted on 06/01/2010 8:43:01 PM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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1967 Nova by Chevy Freak.

blue nova by pictrhound.

73 posted on 06/01/2010 8:47:54 PM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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To: Clay Moore

Thanks.


74 posted on 06/01/2010 8:54:31 PM PDT by Natural Born 54 (FUBO x 10)
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To: LibWhacker

Technically, it went supernova 520 years ago.


75 posted on 06/01/2010 9:04:08 PM PDT by Tench_Coxe
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To: ETL
oh yeah...
76 posted on 06/01/2010 9:08:45 PM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: Tench_Coxe
Technically, it went supernova 520 years ago.

That's IF it's showing up as a super nova now. It isn't.

77 posted on 06/01/2010 9:08:50 PM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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To: tlb

Well if it blows or if it already has blown then hopefully it will be earlier in the usurper’s fraudulent admin so we can get the misery over sooner than later.

At least if we are vaporized then we do not have to look at his spousal wookie anymore.


78 posted on 06/01/2010 9:09:44 PM PDT by Frantzie (Democrats = Party of I*lam)
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To: FARS

Thanks for the ping!


79 posted on 06/01/2010 9:35:12 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: JRandomFreeper

AMC also had a hard time with their “Matador,” so I’m told.


80 posted on 06/01/2010 9:40:37 PM PDT by Erasmus (Looks like we're between a lithic outcropping and a region of low compressibility.)
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